Veteran Figueroa looks to give PawSox season a storybook ending

Monday

Sep 17, 2012 at 7:20 PM

To this point, it has been about as close to a perfect season for the PawSox as possible. They’re looking for the perfect finish.On Tuesday night, Pawtucket — champions of the International League for...

TIM BRITTON

To this point, it has been about as close to a perfect season for the PawSox as possible. They’re looking for the perfect finish.

On Tuesday night, Pawtucket — champions of the International League for the first time since 1984 — will take on the Pacific Coast League champion Reno Aces — Triple-A team of the Arizona Diamondbacks — in the seventh annual Triple-A National Championship Game in Durham, N.C.

It’s the first time either team has appeared in the game, which has been around since 2006. The I.L. has won the last three meetings.

This season, the PawSox have developed players who have helped the Red Sox on the major-league level, and they’ve helped several other Sox rehabilitate from injuries. And all the while, Pawtucket has kept winning — enough to claim the International League’s wild card, enough to knock off the division champion Yankees in the postseason, enough to claim the team’s first Governors’ Cup in 28 years by beating Charlotte.

On Tuesday night, the PawSox season finally comes to a close — the latest into September the franchise has ever played a baseball game.

On the mound for Pawtucket will be Nelson Figueroa, a 38-year-old veteran who perhaps best captures the strangeness of this postseason run.

Figueroa wasn’t even on the PawSox until July, signed off the scrap heap after he was unexpectedly released by the Yankees. After pitching well down the stretch, he’s turned into Pawtucket’s good-luck charm in September. He has been nothing short of Pawtucket’s version of Derek Lowe from the 2004 Red Sox postseason: He was on the mound when the PawSox clinched a playoff berth, clinched the series over Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and clinched the Governors’ Cup over Charlotte.

They hope he’s got one more clinching game in him. Figueroa has allowed three earned runs in his last four starts, tossing 29 innings in that span.

The PawSox have overcome the same kind of adversity throughout the season. After a sizzling start, Pawtucket slogged through the middle of the summer, losing 11 of 12 at one point and looking like a long shot for postseason play. Sixty-nine different players have suited up for the PawSox, just one shy of the franchise record. Many of them, like Figueroa, weren’t with the squad or even the system on Opening Day.

Figueroa — who has spent time with six major-league clubs since 2000 — has welcomed the second chance offered him in Pawtucket.

“I’ve had an opportunity to come here and fit in and try to push these guys in the right direction and keep the ship afloat as we’ve lost so many pieces along the way,” Figueroa said during the opening-round series with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. “We work a lot on days we don’t pitch, all the starters are sitting up there and trying to figure out ways to get guys out and what works on certain hitters. They get to see me when I’m out there on the mound: It’s not overpowering stuff, but it works, and I’ve done it for 18 years.”

The man opposing him on Tuesday night has barely been alive that long. Reno will trot out Trevor Bauer, who was all of 4 years old the day Figueroa was drafted into professional baseball. The now 21-year-old right-hander is on the opposite end of the professional spectrum from Figueroa, having made his major-league debut on June 28 — barely a year removed from being the third pick in 2011’s draft.

Bauer has spent the majority of his season living up to that billing — and his team’s name. In 14 regular-season starts for the Aces, he went 5-1 with a 2.85 ERA. He struck out 97 men in 82 innings. It’s important to remember he did this in the PCL, the most hitter-friendly league in professional baseball.

Bauer has allowed one run in 112/3 innings in the postseason, with 11 strikeouts but 10 walks.

Offensively, Reno has been boosted by former big-league first baseman Mike Jacobs, who has four homers and 12 RBIs in nine playoff contests.

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